Question: What’s your favorite Walter moment?

John Noble: Which is my favorite Walter really, because I’ve played a bunch of different versions of him. Gee, I don’t know.  I loved it when he was being random, which was probably the original version of him more than anyone else. I loved doing Walter then and all of the different mental states that we’ve played during the time, but when he was being completely random and had very poor social skills. 

I loved the scenes that he played with Peter, the connecting stuff that I played with Josh Jackson over the five years. Both of us really loved doing that work. There were so many different aspects of Walter, the comedy and drama and emotion and so forth.  He was a fully-flushed character. So it’s hard for me to say what my favorite one was, but FRINGE is essentially a love story and so the scenes where he had close connection with Peter, but also with Anna’s character or Jasika’s character were very special to me.

Question: Was it hard keeping the different Walters separate in your mind?

John Noble: Not really, no. I think the writing was there for me to play and the situations were such that... Look, at times it was tricky. I'll be honest with you that I didn’t drop into the mannerisms of another version of the character, but I guess I was pretty alert to that. I used to have people on set saying, “Can you keep an eye open for me to make sure I don’t do Walter version ... or something?” And sometimes, particularly my camera operators, would take five and say, “John, that’s the wrong one.” 

Question: Which version of Walter was easiest to find, in terms of the character’s voice? Which was the hardest and which one was really the most pure fun?

John Noble: Going backwards, the pure fun was the original Walter, who was just released from a mental institution and probably shouldn’t have been. He was just fun because he could basically say and do anything and get away with it.

The most difficult Walter was the one that I had to play when there was no Peter in the world. That was really tricky. I think it was the beginning of Season 4. It was really tricky to play that same character but without the relationship with the son redeeming himself. He wasn’t a well fellow. I mean I played him with a lot of OCD attributes. He really wasn’t a very pleasant man. I found that one the most difficult to play.

John Noble (cont): I loved playing Walternate, because he was the same character actually, completely the same character, version 1985 and then it developed in such a different way physically and mentally. So to be able to play that in the same television series as playing the other ones was a fantastic gift to me.  

Question: After playing Walter for five years, has any of his quirkiness crept into your personality?

John Noble: I don’t know, probably. I don’t know where the line is. I don’t know how much of myself is in Walter. There’s got to be a bit of him there. But no, I don’t have any food fetishes or anything of that nature. But I love having played Walter because I suppose any actor brings a certain aspect of their own personality to their work and so I had a fairly broad canvas to paint on there with the different versions. I guess there’s a lot of me in there somewhere. 

Question: What do you think was the most rewarding thing about playing Walter?

John Noble: I suppose when you start up in acting, you hope to be given challenges and you always have dreams about the things you could do and couldn’t do, but normally we get pigeon holed a little bit as we go on in our careers. We often get pigeon holed as a tough guy or whatever else we get pigeon holed in. I’ve sort of been, I guess, pigeon holed as sort of a heavy, serious, almost a baddy but not a baddy over the years of my work in television, particularly. 

John Noble (cont): It was wonderful to be able to play a character who had so many colors, who was able to play comedy, to play incredibly vulnerable, which he did a lot of the time, to play the love story, to play the relationship with the son, which is quite unusual, particularly—I think it’s one of the strengths that bridged the relationship between the man and his son that makes it unusual and special. That’s a gift to me, as an actor. It was like everything you could possibly hope for and not only that but to play it out over five years. So I was a very lucky actor.  

Question: Was there anything that's been more difficult to play than others?

John Noble: These characters are complex. Let’s talk about my character -- Walter is incredibly complex. I look at every scene working out -- I do a lot of thinking about the work I do and trying to get the rhythms into scenes. You’re always working with the relationships and trying to trail along another one or two or three or four or five years of relationships in behind them with different mental states. 

John Noble (cont): It’s pretty demanding, but then again, I love that so I wouldn’t say it was just doing the job or trying to do the job properly. It was never a job that you could sit on our laurels or rest on your laurels, which I didn’t think anyway.

It was very challenging. It’s basically 43 minutes of television and we were shooting that in a week. We really had to be on the ball and we were working with an amazing crew.

I mean I used to say, a week would go by and I would say, “Well that’s … how on earth did we shoot another episode?” but we did, and particularly in the final season when we were shooting seven-day episodes with a reduced budget and big special effects. But the team was so polished by then that we were able to do it and I think with incredible results. 
 

Question: If you could’ve written a script, what would you like to have seen happen to Walter that didn’t?

John Noble: Nothing. I think what he’s done with Walter is absolutely perfect. If you had asked me in Season 1 where I thought Walter should finish up, it would’ve been exactly where he does. That’s the remarkable thing. When I say I think it’s a great finale that’s the reason why. I think it’s the perfect out for Walter. 

I’m truly grateful to the writers for giving me that, because over the years when I’ve spoken about the character with them I’ve always felt that this would be the perfect way to end and complete his journey, to complete the journey of this series and they gave it to me. So I’m incredibly grateful. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.  

Question: Were there any storylines that you wished you could’ve lingered on or gone a little deeper with, because you enjoyed or were intrigued by them?

John Noble: No, really I think the main story lines are what always intrigued me, with those that were the relationships between the characters against whatever backdrop, whether it was in an ordinary universe or a universe in the future. I think the glue that held FRINGE together was the relationships. 

John Noble (cont): I know the other characters feel the same. They were the things that we really looked forward to doing. Despite what was happening around us, we would have these tenuous, sort of incredibly real and deep relationships with the other characters. Whatever situation we were in, those relationships, I believe, still carried the day. They were the things that made FRINGE work. 

So I think we have played those storylines out. I could look back and think, “Gee, I wonder what every happened to ... or something of that nature, back in Season 2,” but it doesn’t really concern me because what we, the body of actors, the body of characters, did was continue them anyway.  

Question: At what point did you find out about twists?  Do you see a script and find out for that way or do the writers tell you ahead of time that this is where it’s going?

John Noble: Certainly, we were surprised. I suppose an example that would encapsulate that surprise is the time that, I think in Season 2, when we were told to go into a sound studio and record our voices for singing. We didn’t know why. We said, “Why are we doing this? I don’t understand.” And of course it was for the musical episode, but we didn’t know, until we got the script really, what we were doing. Suddenly, we found out we were in this bizarre musical, which was huge fun to play, but we didn’t know ahead of time. 

John Noble (cont): So often it was the case that we wouldn’t know which way it was going to go. That’s okay. As actors, you don’t actually need to know the future of the character. You just need to know the backgrounds. Those major shifts into the alternate universe and so forth, which were really challenging, I always found the flashbacks really interesting.  

When I had to do a few episodes of flashback with the full prosthetic makeup and so forth and flash forwards and flash sideways, but the good thing about those things is they keep you very alert. There’s no room for boredom in there. I always loved the challenge. When something new happened, I always used to get quite excited.

Question: I know in general terms you can’t say anything much about the finale, but referencing T.S. Eliot, is it a bang or a whimper?

John Noble: Well, it’s certainly going with a bang. I think it’s one of the best. I couldn’t have imagined a better finale to be honest with you. I read it and I was like, “Oh my goodness me, he’s done it. He’s done it.” He’s answered all these questions and he’s tied off all these things that I had to ask. So I hope history will judge it as one of the great finales of all time. I really believe they will. 

Question: What was your reaction when you read that final script and saw every little nuance of how the story ended?

John Noble: I think we were all apprehensive to see what would happen in the finale. We didn’t know until really quite late in the piece how Joel would finish it off. I can honestly say that it was everything that I had hoped it could possibly be. When I read it I thought that he had done a masterly job in writing in, tied up our character lines, tied up the great story arc. I couldn’t imagine a better job, to be honest with you. So I was extremely elated when I read the final episodes.

Question: How do you hope fans react to this finale?

John Noble: The finale, I believe, I think it’s the best finale I’ve ever read, just in terms of being able to tie up the five years of intense work. To be able to pull it together, in the way that Joel Wyman did, is quite remarkable to me. So I honestly think the fans will be....well, they’ll be disappointed. There’s no question, because the series is finishing, but I think they’ll be very thrilled and honored by the way that Joel has made that happen.  

Question: How was the last day you spent on set in this character?

John Noble: The last day on set was really quite fun. We were all kind of buoyed up. It was one of those nights that go forever. I think we finished at 9:00 in the morning or something, but we had a lot of fun. I can remember we all got a fit of the giggles halfway through the night, which is probably really inappropriate. All of us were doing a scene together. I don’t know. It was just hilarious. I couldn’t get my lines out, which is very unusual for me. I just kept getting it wrong and we were all laughing a lot, but it was good fun. We had a wonderful time. 

The last scene I did was a beautiful scene with Michael Cerveris, but backstage all the rest were on set as well, as we do in most scenes. You give your speech afterwards and so forth. I felt really buoyed up afterwards. I didn’t feel depressed. I thought that we’d really had a great finale. The last day was so much fun. 

Question: What are you going to miss about working with Josh and Anna and Jasika and the whole cast?

John Noble: I guess because I’m the older fellow there I kind of think of them all as my kids in a way. I have a very special love for all of those actors and I’ll miss them. Over the five years we were given the chance to develop some pretty close bonds, both with our characters and personally, and we did. I don’t really know how to explain it any other way than that. It’s something that we earned over five years. It probably wouldn’t have been there with two years, but with five years it was definitely and is definitely there. It’s probably a life-long bond, I imagine. 

Question: Is there anything you can share about working on FRINGE that may surprise fans? Something they may not know?

John Noble: That’s a hard one, because we’ve had such a close relationship with the fans. This has been made possibly through social networking and the Internet now. We have much more contact and we do go off to things like Comic-Con. So I think people know most of our secrets, the day-to-day running of things. 

Working in television is very hard. I think people know that. Just the pure demand of it can really take it out of you physically and mentally, but I think our fans are pretty aware of that anyway.

Question: What do you take away from the FRINGE experience this past five seasons?

John Noble: Doing something of this nature was new to me. I’d never done anything that required a five-year commitment. To build a show that seems to have kept the imagination of the world so much was a bit otherworldly, to be honest with you. I would go to anywhere in the world really and people would stop me in the street and talk about FRINGE and how much they adored it and asked questions about it. 

The international reach of FRINGE, I think, still catches me by surprise a bit at times. Also, I was given the gift of a character that is every actor’s dream. So you combine those two factors and it’s been an incredibly memorable five years.

Question: Does a job like FRINGE make it tricky to pick the next one?

John Noble: Yes, absolutely. My last two characters, Denethor and Walter Bishop, will be hard acts to follow. So I don’t know really -- that sort of sits in the hands of my managers at present. I just have no idea what’s going to be offered to me. I’m looking forward to it though. I’ve had a month off now so I’m ready to start work again. 

Question: How do you choose your roles?

John Noble: A lot of the times roles are chosen for us, to be honest with you. Something will be offered. I don’t know, it might be different for people that are A-list actors, but a lot of us really look at what’s offered to us and look for something that sort of has some traction with other people. But it’s not like I read 100 scripts a week and sort of pick and choose. Maybe some actors do. I certainly don’t do that.  

I’m a character actor, as against a personality actor. So as a character actor I’m always looking for something interesting. I remember when I read Walter, for example, and that was now six years ago, I said, “This is the role for me.” I said that to my family, “This is the role for me.” So there was something there that I knew was absolutely right, and that was just based on the character. So that’s when gut instinct comes into play I think. I know there are certain things I won’t do. 

Question: Looking to the future, one of the other projects you’ve got coming down the line is the SUPERMAN: UNBOUND animated movie, where you’re going to play the villain Brainiac. Did you find it was easier to transition into that role considering your experience playing sort of the mad scientist version of Walter?

John Noble: Doing animation is great fun. It’s like a different world. You basically go in there and it’s all in the imagination. There aren’t even pictures up there to look at. As you know, you usually go in there and create, working with whoever the director is. You just create this voice and this character. Later on maybe you’ll have a look at the picture associated. 

John Noble (cont): For me, it’s a totally different process than doing a film or a stage play, but I love it. It’s incredibly intense work but I love doing the voice work. And then at the end of the day, it’s like the prize to see some huge monster with your voice attached to it. The two to me are technically in different ballparks.  

Question: Have you always had an interest in science or was that somewhat inspired by working on FRINGE?

John Noble: Over the last 25 years, since a lot of science writing became accessible to laymen, I’ve become quite a consumer of science. As a child, I wasn’t into science, as I went into the humanities and I regret that now. I regret that that situation exists, because, to be honest with you, I find science really sexy, and at the time that I was a school kid it certainly wasn’t.   

John Noble (cont): So probably the last 25 years, with science becoming far more accessible to all of us, I’ve become a pretty avid reader and devourer of it. One of the objectives that I have working with Science channel is to get more people talking about it because it’s such fun. That’s something that I discuss with Science channel people quite often.